Mangum working to expand FAMU’s role in STEM research

One day after Gov. Rick Scott signed a budget the pumped millions of additional dollars into FAMU’s STEM programs, President Elmira Mangum spoke about her vision to expand the university’s research activities in those critical areas.

Mangum told the Economic Club of Florida on June 3 that she wants to bring in more funds to support professors who are conducting cutting-edge research in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.

“Our faculty members are engaged in research and my goal is to fund them in a way that they can continue to spend more time on research activity as well as attract new graduate students and increase our research efforts,” Mangum said. “Those are resources that also benefit our undergraduate program and attract students to our campus. My vision is to increase, significantly, that research funding by 2019. I am convinced that we have the talent and resources currently available to meet that objective.”

Mangum specifically called attention to the more than 30 patents secured by FAMU professors and said she wants to work with those faculty members to “monetize” that research.

“My goal is to monetize as many of those patents as I can,” she said. “So we will be working with our commercialization and tech transfer functions to increase our reach into the economy by taking the work that our faculty has done – if we can convince them to let it go – to make sure that it feeds back into our academic program. Because the creation of knowledge and creation of inventions and research is for the purpose of distributing it through society to improve all of our lives.”

While discussing FAMU’s STEM mission, the new president also repeatedly highlighted the success of the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

“Our College of Pharmacy continues to set itself apart as a leading producer of African American pharmacists, with our graduates earning an average salary of over $100,000 per year,” Mangum said.

The FAMU pharmacy college was one the biggest winners in the Florida Legislature’s budget. Lawmakers appropriated $700,000 for pharmacy faculty pay raises and $10M to help complete Phase II of the pharmacy complex. The budget also provides full operational funding for the pharmacy satellite campus in Crestview for the fourth consecutive year. 

Mangum promised that the dollars the state has invested into FAMU’s pharmacy program will continue to go to good use.

“The College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences is doing very well in term of its programs and activities,” she said. “The grants that they receive help them study diseases that affect minorities disproportionately. They’re looking at hypertension, cancer, as well as chronic infection and diabetes.”

View the full speech here at the Florida Channel.